PUGWASH – Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter will be in Pugwash on Wednesday to help officially open one of the province’s newest collaborative emergency centres.

The opening is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at North Cumberland Memorial Hospital.

The CEC in Pugwash began seeing patients in September.

It’s the third collaborative centre in Cumberland County, following South Cumberland in Parrsboro (the province’s first CEC) and All Saints Hospital in Springhill.

The opening of the CECs has all but eliminated the closures of emergency departments in Cumberland County.

The new centre in Pugwash will be part of a capital retrofit for the hospital that will see it connected to the neighbouring East Cumberland Lodge senior’s care centre.

It also comes as the province works to create a pool of physicians to fill shifts in rural emergency rooms. The ER coverage program will include an improved scheduling system that should help alleviate some of the pressure being faced by small, rural ERs.

The province announced in November that Dr. Kazeem Rezvani was locating to Pugwash.